The Shabby Chic Boutique : Roof and Lights

Hello my dear followers

I've been busy working on the roof of my new shabby Boutique, since the inital roof that came with the conservatory was unfortunately unusable

Since I'm always a bit stressed when it comes to the lights in my miniature projects, I wanted to try something else here

I don't remember exactly when and where I stumbled upon this great idea .... I think it was either on PINTEREST or on YOUTUBE, but anyways, thanks to the person who posted it, because it's a great alternative to the usual lights which are not always easy to get to work and/or to install

I suppose you all know these tiny little christmas lights, the one's that are battery operated

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well I used 2 of these, with 20 little lights on each one

I bought some polysterene foam board (hard and sturdy, but still easy to cut with a simple cutter tool).

The board is 3,5 mm thick

Oh, if you ever need material like that, you should check out the following online shop :

www.modulor.de

Then I traced the horizontal and vertical lines in order to know where the holes for the lights are gonna go and of course in order to have this look neat once installed.

Sand the inside of the holes a bit and put the lights in (I used a little glue to hold them in place, but please do not use any super glue or you will never ever be able to remove the lights without damaging the whole thing)

Turn around and it should look something like this

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And once installed, the light in the shop is really great

And I like how my roof turned out, it's kinda nice, don't you think ?

When you're building the roof around these little lights, you need to have at least 3-4 cm height, remember that. Other than that, it's entirely up to your own imagination on what your finished roof will look like

Bye for now, be back soon

See ya

D.

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The Shabby Chic Boutique

Hi everyone 💋

This is the 1st post about my latest project, a cute little shabby chic Boutique

In fact, the basic idea was not to make such a shop, but to work with what I had in my stash. I wanted to make something out of the things I had either leftover from previous projects, or stuff I bought and just never used

I had this little conservatory, must have been a few years back when I bought it. I had tried once to assemble it, sort of a dry-fit with tape, just to get an idea of the size, and unfortunately, all the pieces for the roof were .... well simply terrible, they didn't either fit or were broken and I decided to throw those away and just kept the main structure and the floor

So the first thing that came to my mind was of course to make it a conservatory with lots of plants etc and a cute place to sit, read a book, enjoy a cup of coffee or a glass of champagne

But then I thought : NO ..... everybody does that, so let's make something else with this ..... even though it doesn't have a rood .... yet 😉😉

and so the idea of making it a shop came up

..... the shabby chic part came later, when I had decided which of my pieces I'd use

I had a box full of unpainted barewood furniture and these are ideal when starting a new project, because you can make exactly what you need instead of buying a finished piece that sometimes doesn't really fit, or isn't the right color and so on .....

Because of my recent frustration and thinking about quitting the hobby, I didn't post anything for quite some time, that's the reason why the shop is almost finished

Just need to work on the roof some more

So let's see what I've done so far

Enjoy

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OK, here we go ..... text is underneath the picture

The picture above shows the front of the shop, as you can see, there’s no roof yet, but I’ll get to that, don’t worry 😂

I did change the doors a bit, removed the trellis and added a few small parts, like flat wooden sticks (coffee stirrers) around the window itself, inside and out, which I colored first and then added a few details from card stock, which I didn’t cut out by hand, but by using a border punch

Doors are open, let’s go get a peek inside

As you can see I added lots of funny details on the front and the sides.

Here you can see a cute little sign with the opening hours of the shop as well as some more cardboard borders cut with a border punch.

I also made these frames and added some cute shabby-like pictures, was kinda fun 

On the left side, there is a little sign showing the credit cards accepted in my shop 😎😎

and a few more details, like the lace I added above one of the pictures and of course the colored light bulbs (unfortunately not working) 

This is a first glimpse at the inside, picture taken from above, since there isn't a roof yet, lol

As you can see, I also added a few details to the sides of the shop, boarders, shappy pictures, nicely framed

I don't know if you see these cute little framed pictures, but they all show old fashioned bath tubs

I tried to take photos inside the shop ..... sorry if they're not perfect, it's not really an easy task, lol, cause the iPhone has become almost too big

Another cute corner inside the shop (more details will follow in some of the pics below)

I made this old suitcase to display a few items, what do you think ?

Wall clocks, shabby shutters, lamps, glass jugs ..... there's almost anything a

shabby heart could desire

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As I said in the beginning of this post, I had an entire box full of unpainted "naked" barewood furniture. OK, these pieces are fully assembled, but still, you can give them any look you want, which is great for any project of course.

I started out with the table - after going through all my accessories to see what I could use to

sell in my shop. I made a few new items too, like the lamps, the jug, the blue box in the back, but mostly I used what I had, which is a good way to get these things out of the box and it's very inexpensive

This beautiful shelf was initally a display for a 1:144 dollhouse inside, which is not at all my style, so I decided to make it a regular shelf/wardrobe or so. I removed everything behind the doors and finished the interior my way. The painting and aging of a piece of furniture really is a piece of cake, even suitable for beginners

I also love to add a few more details to the outside of the door and I changed the handles, as well as the one's on the drawers

After painting and before gluing in the dividers, I added some wall paper (leftovers of course)

to the back of the shelf, because on one hand, it gives you a nice finish and on the other hand, it's simply cute. All the items inside this shelf were in my stash, so I really didn't have to buy anything

I decided to fill the drawers with table cloths and/or napkins

Empty drawers are simply a NO-GO, I just hate it ..... I know, it's kinda stupid, but in real

life, they wouldn't be empty either, would they

Here's a wardrobe I found in my furniture box, I painted and aged it and added some lovely details to the front of the doors

If you wanna know how I do this, feel free to get in touch and ask, I'm always glad to share

I made the two boxes you see on top

A closer look at the details I added to the front of the doors

So this shelf hold a few more items I either found in my stash or made myself.

I had a small box with all sorts of towels, kitchen or bath, so I started to fill the shelf with these

Then I found some rectangular glass beads and I made these cute bottles with those

The back also has some wallpaper, same as the other one. I added some lace to give it an even more

shabby look and to fill the lower part, I simply made a few of these canisters which can be used for anything you want, either in the kitchen, or the bathroom or even the bedroom

These 2 little cuties were nightstands, I bought them already painted (white)

But I didn't just wanna leave them plain white, so I started to sand most of the white paint away, before beginning with the aging process.

The glass jars on top also come from my stash and I simply filled them, added a little bow or a label, the possibilities are endless here

And of course ..... the drawers are filled 

Here we have kitchen towels, golden cutlery, candles

Once I has finished painting and aging this tiny side table, I made some candle holders with beads and jewellery findings, bead caps etc.

I also found these 2 shutters, so I decided I could use them to sell in my shop,

once I've given them the shabby look of course.

Shutters can be used as decoration accessories in many ways

These 2 tiny tables were made with only 2 parts : 

the top is a simple wood circle 

available at Amazon : https://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Cutout-Circles-Projects-Ornaments/dp/B01182WAUG/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1510659076&sr=8-5&keywords=small+round+wood+pieces&dpID=61tcEHTi0KL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

and the lower part is from an old chess piece, just cut off it's head 😱😱

Glue together, paint the way you want, add some lace around the top maybe and decorate, easy peasy

The lamps are all DIY too, but I must say I'm not very happy with the result, guess I gotta give this another try

A hanging glass in the shape of a heart, filled with pearls

Don't really know what it is supposed to be though ..... 😂😂😂 but I simply liked it

A few DIY wall clocks, very easy to make

Another one

This items is strictly for wall decoration .... made with another of the round wood pieces I used for the 2 little tables. The rose is made with plaster and a mould I found on Etsy

Just glue and paint and you're done

The back wall of the shop fortunately has no windows, so I had a least some space to show my

wall decorations there. I made the frames myself, with the help of a DIY mould and some plaster.

Initially I bought one and made my own moulds. I guess that as long as I don't sell them, it's ok.

But I also made a few entirely myself, not shown in this pic though

Something often found in a shabby chic boutique are these old shop signs, or advertisments.

I found most of them on the Internet, printed them out in the correct size (using matt photo paper for this particular project) and glued them on frames I painted first of course. These "frames" are cut out from 1,5 - 2 mm thick matboard.

This chest was another barowood piece and I must say it turned out quite nicely. 

I'm using it in my shop to display my old shop signs (seen in the picture before)

I even found this nice fireplace addition, which is now going to be sold in my new shop

This was the lower part of a kitchen cupboard that I cut in 2. It had doors, which I simply couldn't use here because there were 3 and they were so small that nothing would fit in here, because the opening was just not big enough. So I removed the doors and this is how it ended up

I'm working quite a lot with matboard and I wanted to make a suitcase, looking old and used

... to display a few items like flowers pots I painted, glass bottles with bath salt, pillows, jugs, etc.

This is the back of the suitcase ... the parts are glued together here and do not open and/or close, because that was best for the purpose here

As you can see, I filled it nicely with lot of different things

I will probably make a tutorial on how I made the suitcase

Feel free to get in touch if you'd be interested

That's it for today, I'll be working on the roof for my shop now and

get back here with pics as soon as possible

Take Care

See ya

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The Lavender Shop : finally finished

Hi there

I know I know, it's been a while since I last posted something here and I'm sorry about that, but I have to say that I've been very frustrated lately, regarding my hobby 💔

 I just don't get it, you know, everybody always says that my miniature stuff is sooooo great and beautiful and bla bla bla, but when I try to sell some of it, nobody wants to pay for it

I mean, come on, when you want a pair of shoes, you gotta pay for it too

And believe me, it was NOT AT ALL about the money, the prices were more than correct, the only reason I wanted to sell was the lack of space. We do have a very big house and I do have quite some space for my miniature, but still, after more than 20 years, I just wanted to get rid of some of my pieces in order to make a little room for new projects

But I really don't feel like talking about that here.

Let's have a look at my finally finished lavender shop 

There might even be a chance that it'll be featured in A.M. Magazine next year, if I'm lucky

So here's the final tour of my shop, enjoy and come back for more, I do have a new project (almost finished even)

Take care

👀👀👀

💜

D.